Anyone remember Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena for the Playstation? It's basically what happens when you mix Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Ogre Battle in one fine game.
This game is underrated gem if you like tactical role-playing strategy games. Heck, I can quite say that very few games today can match Brigandine's gameplay.
The game takes place in the continent of Forsena. After a long war against the Kingdom of Norgard, the Kingdom of Almekia won and has achieved it's goal of attaining peace.
However, one year after the end of the war, General Zemeckis killed King Heingst of Almekia and transformed the Kingdom of Almekia into the Esgares Empire and sets out to conquer the entire continent and in doing so plunges the entire continent into all-out war as Kingdoms fight amongst each other for supremacy.
You start out as playing 5 Kingdoms (6 if you know the secret code or you are playing the Grand Edition version of the game).
*The Kingdom of Norgard to the snowy north, led by King Vaynard the "White Wolf". He wishes to conquer the continent under his rule not out of sellfish reasons but out of belief that his rule will end the chaos and will lead to true peace.
*The Kingdom of New Almekia to the west, led by Prince Lance, a bright, idealistic and kind but naive young man. Formerly the Kingdom of Padstow, after Prince Lance asks for aid, King Coel dethrones himself and lets the Prince control the entire kingdom out of loyalty to Almekia.
*The Kingdom of Carleon to the Southwest, ruled by the "Silent Wise King" Cai. A land of mages, he realized that his lands are in danger of conquest by the three warlords (Zemekis, Vaynard, Dryst) and forms an alliance with New Almekia.
*The Kingdom of Iscalio to the southwest, led by the "Mad Monarch" King Dryst. A selfish and chaotic person who's greed causes suffering to his people. He sees the chaos as an excuse to attack the other kingdoms and have fun waging wars and conquer new territories.
*The Kingdom of Leonia to the east, led by Queen Lyonesse, a former peasant girl appointed by the populace due to a prophecy. A religious country of priests and clerics who just wants to have peace. However, when the Kingdoms of Norgard and Iscalio threatens their lands, they aren't afraid to fight back.
*The Esgares Empire led by Emperor Zemekis. After deposing of King Heingst, he establishes the Esgares Empire to conquer the entire continent, However, he does this not out of the simple desire for conquest but for the fact that warfare is the only thing he knows and peace has no use for a military man like him.
Like Fire Emblem, you have a total of 40+ characters of different classes. Like Advance Wars, you have to recruit many units of vastly different roles and functions. Like Ogre Battle, you'll have to set up your forces and conquer cities and make your own cities are properly defended.
The story is impressive for it's time, as well as the fact characters may have conversations during the preparation phase and the battle map and sometimes opposing characters in the battle field will get into conversations that range from serious to humorous.
The gameplay however is where it really shines.
Your characters are Rune Knights who can summon and control monsters. They come from a variety of classes from Knights, Mages, Clerics, Barbarians,etc while the main rulers have a unique class. Just like with Fire Emblem, these characters have their own stats, backstory, personality, unique portraits,etc.
Just like with Fire Emblem, some characters are Jeigans whose role is help the weaker characters grow. Others are like Ests in which they start at a low level but will grow to surpase the Jeigans if trained enough. Others are already powerful enough that they will be your main units for the rest of the game regardless.
Each character has a set ammount of Rune Power which governs how many monsters is the Knight able to recruit into his/her own squad.
For example: A Knight may have 150 Rune Power. A Dragon may be a powerful unit but costs a total of 75 Rune Power while a giant scorpion requires only 20 rune power. Thus, a Knight may be able to field 4 scorpions at the cost of one dragon.
Then you have the Monsters, your units. They range from the powerful and durable but slow and low accuraccy units Dragons, Giants and Golems. support, ranged and healer units like Pixies, Angels, Centaurs and Unicorns, flying units like Gryphons, Wyverns and Roks and standard units like Lizardmen, Giant Scorpions, Zombies and more. They also have their own unit costs as important units like Dragons and Angels cost alot of mana to summon while weak units like Pixis, Zombies, etc have low mana costs. The fact you only can only earn a set amount of mana per castle only makes things complicated.
All of units and rune knights have their own affinity to a certain element and it will affect the damage inflicted or taken.
Just like with Advance Wars, each unit has their own strengths and weaknesses. Unlike with Advance Wars though, these units aren't just simple disposable units. Just like with the above Rune Knights, they too can grow stronger and upgrade into stronger classes, forcing the player to think carefully as unlike the Rune Knights who if they run out of HP, they will just be injured for a period of time, a unit who dies, dies for real and will never be revived.
The above mechanics provides the player with a overwhelming amount of flexibility in customizing and creating your own army. That is also not mentioning the opportunity to equip your characters with weapons, sending them on quests that can cause events like increasing the stats of the character, accquiring rare items and recruiting new characters but at the cost of the knight not being available for battle, not to mention a chance for the character to be injured, taking them out of the battle for a period of time.
After the preparation phase is done, you will be sent to the attack phase where you will select which rune knights to attack an enemy castle while making sure not to overextend your forces lest while attacking an enemy castle, you will experience an attacking from another enemy kingdom. Then, you are then sent to the battle map but unlike Fire Emblem, the battlefield is hex-based as opposed to square-based.
The defending units stay near the castle while the attacking units start from the corner of the map. In this part of the game, both sides deploy their forces and attempt to destroy the other side. Victory can be accomplished for the attackers if they can force all the enemy generals to retreat within thirteen turns. Victory for the defenders can be obtained either by defeating the enemy knights or by holding out for thirteen turns.
All knights (a maxmium of three can be deployed by either side each battle) have an area of control called, simply enough, Rune Area. When monsters controlled by their Rune Knight leave this area, they become very weak and are not nearly as effective as normal. This means players have to strategically maneuver their forces within these zones of control while still defeating their enemies.
The game is very addictive and enjoyable, as I can quite attest through endless playthroughs. It's such a shame very few strategy RPGs today can match the depth of what Brigandine has to offer in terms of gameplay.
Also to keep in mind that there are two versions of the game. One, Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena internationally released and Brigandine: Grand Edition which provides voiced anime cutscenes, expands the story and characters but also further refines and adds new additions the gameplay.
For SRPG and Fire Emblem Fans who need more strategy game goodness. This game can give you exactly what you want and even more.